The Summer Cottage

by Lily Everett

  Her gaze slid sideways to Logan before she could stop it. “Either of you,” she finished, as impassively as she could manage.

  The light in Logan’s eyes dimmed as if she’d snuffed it out like a candle. His abrupt shift to slide his hands in his pockets made her wonder if he’d been about to reach out to her.

  Jessica flinched away from the urge to hope like a person with vertigo on the edge of a cliff. Logan wasn’t ready to change who he was, wasn’t ready for a real emotional commitment. He might never be. And in the meantime, she couldn’t wait around, wishing and hoping for more.

  It would hurt too much.

  Forcing herself to look away from Logan, Jessica faced her boss. A muscle ticked in Miles’s stony jaw. “Ms. Bell. Here you are.”

  “Here I am.” She projected a light professionalism she didn’t really feel. “I promised Dylan and Penny I’d help set up for the party.”

  Miles frowned. “Yes, so Logan mentioned. Not exactly in your job description, Ms. Bell. Unlike accompanying Logan when he travels. That is part of your job, as I remember explaining it.”

  Jessica suppressed a wince. Miles could smell fear, like blood in the water. But before she could make the excuse that she’d told Logan not to travel anywhere—and Miles would see it as an excuse, he didn’t accept any rationalization of failure—Logan said, “It’s fine. I told her to stay here, and that I’d see her back in New York on Monday.”

  His voice was quiet, a little tired around the edges, but the fact that he was trying to cover for her made emotion rise up to clog Jessica’s throat.

  She couldn’t stop herself from meeting his gaze, and the weary defeat in his blue eyes nearly exploded the ball of emotion into a storm of tears. But Logan smiled at her, a small, private smile that looked as if it intended to be reassuring. “Bright and early, Monday morning, back to the real world. Everything just as it was before we left.”

  The world screeched to a halt around Jessica’s ears at the subtle message Logan was sending, like a whisper only she could hear. Back to normal, exactly as they’d agreed.

  He was telling her she could have what she’d negotiated for up front—a week of bliss, of fun and discovery in his arms, and on Monday, they’d pick up where they left off, as colleagues. It was everything she’d thought she wanted, especially since it was all she believed she could have after he stormed out of the summer cottage.

  As Logan handed her what she’d asked for, free and easy as a gift, Jessica realized the truth. She wanted more.

  She wanted it all. And for the first time in years, Jessica seriously wondered if it might be possible.

  *

  Jessica didn’t even appear to register the way Miles was complaining that everything better not be back to the way it was, because he couldn’t have Logan dropping dead of a heart attack before the age of forty due to stress and exhaustion.

  That was fine. Logan was ignoring him, too. But then, he usually ignored Miles, while Jessica usually hung on the man’s every word. Miles was her boss, after all, and her job was the most important thing to her—which she’d proved by acting like there was nothing between her and Logan, the minute Miles showed up.

  But now she was staring at Logan in a daze, as if he’d somehow shocked the sense out of her by trying to finally give her what she’d asked for.

  Which didn’t make Logan feel too good, especially when combined with the fact that he was here now, with Miles, to try to start standing together as a family. Tuning the big man out probably wasn’t the best way to go about it.

  Logan tuned back in with a vengeance when the front door of the café pushed open, and Dylan stomped down the steps to confront them. He went right up to Miles, toe to toe with their older brother, and it gave Logan a jolt to notice as if for the first time how alike they looked. Not merely their blue eyes, light-brown hair, and tall, athletic frames, but in their identical stubborn expressions.

  Maybe he should read up on genetics—clearly a fascinating field of scientific study.

  A tall woman Logan didn’t know hovered in the restaurant doorway behind Dylan, watching with definite interest.

  “Great job keeping him distracted,” Jessica muttered, and the woman grimaced.

  “Sorry, he’s a force of nature when he’s going after something.”

  “Family trait,” Jessica replied tersely, causing the young woman to grin and flick a sideways glance at Miles.

  Ignoring all the byplay, Dylan divided his glower equally between both of his older brothers as if unsure whose ass should be at the top of his to-be-kicked list. “If you’re here to try and stop me from marrying Penny, you may as well head back to the city.”

  Miles stepped up, as usual, raising his smoothly shaved chin to stare down his long, straight nose. “Don’t cast me as the villain in this drama. I’m only here to make sure no one is taking advantage of you.”

  Dylan snorted as if he didn’t buy it for a second, but Logan saw the way the lines at the corners of Miles’s eyes deepened and his frozen mask chilled down another few degrees.

  This was the kind of fraught, intensely emotional confrontation Logan hated. Everyone here believed he was right, utterly and completely, and no one was ever going to back down. Usually he stayed out of it, knowing the chaos would eventually resolve itself.

  “And I suppose the fact that I love Penny and she loves me,” Dylan argued, “that means nothing to you.”

  It was Miles’s turn to register complete disbelief, although he was too controlled to snort. “Dylan. You’ve known each other for less than a month.”

  “So? Grandma told me once that Dad asked Mom to marry him on their third date.”

  The mention of their parents shut Miles up as nothing else could. Turning his hard-jawed face away to stare out at the ocean vista that provided a backdrop to the Firefly Café, he muttered to Logan, “Reason with him. I can’t deal with him when he’s like this.”

  A tiny intake of breath to his right had Logan looking back in time to see Jessica subtly stepping closer to Dylan, aligning herself with him. She stared at Logan, her whole heart in her eyes, and he read the plea there as clearly as if she’d written it on the air between them.

  She didn’t want him to systematically take the whole concept of love apart, to reduce it to pieces and parts, components scattered across a lab table for dissection. That’s all Jessica thought he’d know to do with love.

  Maybe that was true, before Sanctuary Island. But now … Logan took a deep breath and faced his younger brother—although his words were meant for the older brother.

  Once again, Logan was in the middle, tugged in opposite directions. But this time, he was sure enough of his own footing to keep from budging. Jessica had given him that. So he paid her back the only way he knew how.

  “Miles wants me to tell you that love is nothing more than chemicals in the brain, a means to promote the propagation of the species. Maybe he thinks the fact that there’s a biological basis for the experience of loving another human being means it’s not real. But I’m a scientist, and a man, and I know that love is real … that it’s something more than an evolutionary imperative.”

  Miles swung around, hell in his eyes, but before he could blast Logan, Jessica said, “You wanted him to talk. So let him talk.”

  A little thrown by the novel experience of Jessica defending him against Miles—usually, the two of them ganged up on Logan to bug him into working less and eating more—Logan had to refocus on Dylan’s set, uncertain face to keep going.

  “Love is not an equation,” Logan told him. He told Miles, and Jessica, and himself, the truth revealing itself to him as he spoke, unfolding from deep inside him. “You can’t plug in a given set of values and solve for x. Two virtual strangers might look at each other across a crowded room and know … while for others, it might take years as coworkers—friends—to understand the truth.”

  Keeping his gaze steadily locked on his brother, heart hammering at even the thought of gl
ancing at Jessica, Logan saw the moment Dylan realized that he had at least one brother’s support. The gratitude and relief on his face was almost enough to knock Logan off his feet.

  But he managed to keep his balance—until he had an armful of warm, soft, trembling woman.

  Staring down at Jessica in stunned surprise, Logan murmured, “What are you doing?”

  “For a genius, sometimes you’re kind of slow on the uptake,” she said, a beaming smile breaking through the tears rolling down her pink cheeks. “Kiss me, Logan.”

  “But what about—mmmf…” Logan broke off his question about Miles with a happy groan, wrapping his arms around Jessica tightly enough to pull her fully against him.

  If she didn’t care that she was kissing Logan directly in front of her boss, Logan wasn’t going to be the one to remind her. Not when he had the taste of her in his mouth, the sweet smell of her in his lungs, and the lush curves of her body in his hands.

  And when the kiss finally broke, purely for lack of oxygen, Logan looked up to see Dylan giving him a wink as he steered their shocked oldest brother down the path to the deck at the back of the restaurant to finish their conversation there.

  “Looks like your impassioned speech about love didn’t manage to completely convince Miles,” Jessica observed.

  Logan adored the breathless tone of her voice, the way she could sound so serene and amused even as her body tried to mold itself to his.

  “As long as it convinced you,” he said roughly.

  A note of uncertainty threaded through as she replied, “You convinced me that I was wrong—you do know what love is. But if you wanted to be completely explicit about what you think is happening here between you and me, I wouldn’t complain.”

  Which was her wordy, professional way of asking what the hell Logan intended. In response, Logan dropped a kiss on her uptilted nose.

  “What I think is happening is that I love you. And you love me. And maybe we’re both still figuring out what that means for us, and how to make it work—but I know I want to try. If you’re willing to take a chance on trying to have it all, I want to be the man who shares it with you.”

  Misty moisture clouded her green eyes, and she did that bewildering laughing-while-crying thing again, but Logan didn’t let it bother him. Because she was also nodding, and kissing every inch of his face and neck that she could reach, and as the sun of Sanctuary Island beat down on their bare heads and gulls wheeled overhead and his lab sat empty hundreds of miles away, Logan had never been happier.

  Yep, he thought smugly as he dipped Jessica to make her laugh and nipped at the tender side of her neck to make her shiver. I am definitely a genius.

  A Q & A with Lily Everett

  1. The Billionaire Brothers novellas take place on Sanctuary Island, a beautiful island preserve for wild horses. Is it based on a real place? And if not, what was the inspiration?

  There are actually several islands off the east coast of the United States that are home to bands of wild horses. I grew up in Virginia, just a few hours from Assateague Island, a breathtakingly beautiful nature preserve. And I thought … what if there were a friendly little town full of interesting people who live side by side with the wild horses?

  2. This trilogy follows three brothers with very different personalities. If you got to choose, which brother would you end up with? The bad boy, the sexy genius, or the high-powered alpha male?

  I like to make fun of my husband for his firm belief that every single one of my characters (male and female!) is based on him. But this question makes me realize that the man I chose to spend my life with actually has a bit of all three Harrington brothers in him: he’s a super intelligent guy who runs his own business … and occasionally enjoys a walk on the wild side. I’m a lucky woman!

  3. If you had to choose, which heroine would you say is most like you? And are there any ways you wish you were more like Penny, Jessica or Greta?

  I identify with each of them in a different way, but what I love about all three of these women is how gutsy they are. Each of them faces a staggering challenge, the kind of roadblock to happiness that derails a lot of people—and each of my heroines rises to meet that challenge, with the help of the man she loves. That’s the kind of woman I want to be, and it’s the kind of woman I love to write about.

  4. Are there any favorite moments you can share with us about writing this series?

  Sanctuary Island is most closely based on Assateague, but I visited a second island to round out my research: Cumberland Island, one of the Golden Isles off the coast of Georgia. My sister and I took an afternoon boat cruise hosted by a chatty local historian, and her fascinating stories of how the island came into the possession of the wealthy Carnegie family in the late 1800’s and then transitioned into a protected national park gave me lots of ideas! But the best part of the day, by far, was standing at the railing of that boat with my sister and spotting wild horses grazing on marsh grass in the distance. It still gives me chills to think about it!

  5. Family is such a strong theme in all the stories. Did you draw on any of your real life relationships when crafting the bond between Dylan, Logan, and Miles?

  I’m extremely grateful that my family relationships aren’t quite as troubled as the ones I write about. I live fifteen minutes from my parents, and I’m so close to my sister that it’s very hard to imagine being as estranged from a sibling as Dylan, Logan, and Miles are from each other. But in a way, that closeness is what I drew on for the emotion in the stories—because I know exactly what those boys were missing out on by not being in each others’ lives. Heartbreaking! I couldn’t let them go on like that.

  6. Are you currently working on anything else right now? Can you give readers an idea of what to look forward to next after reading The Billionaire Brothers series?

  I wrote the Billionaire Brothers stories to welcome readers to Sanctuary Island! I’m hoping everyone wants to keep on coming back there, because I can’t get enough of that place. On July 30th, the very first full-length novel in the series will be available in both print and digital. So be on the lookout for Sanctuary Island! It’s about two sisters who come to the island for the first time to reconnect with their estranged mother … and discover the magic of new possibilities and life-changing love.

  7. If I am a fan the series and want to help, what can I do?

  If you’re a fan, thank you for reading and enjoying my books. That’s enough to make me love you already! But if you really want to get the word out about Sanctuary Island, you can always leave a review on Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads, to help point readers like you toward books they might enjoy. You can keep up to date on all my news and sign up for my newsletter on my website. (http://www.lilyeverett.com) And of course I’d love to connect with you on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/LilyEverettReaderPage) or chat with you on Twitter! (http://www.twitter.com/Lily_Everett)

  Happy reading!

  Lily Everett

  LILY EVERETT is the pseudonym of a bestselling romance novelist. She lives in Austin, Texas.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE SUMMER COTTAGE

  Copyright © 2013 by Lily Everett.

  Cover design by Elsie Lyons.

  Couple © Darren Baker/Shutterstock.com

  House © BigganVi/Shutterstock.com

  All rights reserved.

  For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  eISBN: 9781466832855

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / July 2013

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

 

 

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